Popular Science iPad App is Gorgeous and Functional

http://www.vimeo.com/10630568 Though you may be tiring of the iPad hype machine, this video of a forthcoming Popular Science may reignite – or create – some excitement for the device everyone can’t stop talking about.

The clip is from Bonnier and Berg, who have already produced a great concept video about tablet magazines, and in it, they demonstrate not only how a magazine can look on the iPad but also how it needs its own sort of user interface.

Rather than using the animated page-turn that seems to have become popular, users swipe left and right to move through pages and, when they come upon something they find interesting, swipe up or down to get a more in-depth view.

The only sticking point is that each ‘issue-app’ costs $4.99. It’s not that that’s expensive for one issue of a magazine – it’s that people seem to have different expectations of what’s an acceptable price for digital content. Only time will tell if people are willing to pay the same amount for an electronic magazine as a paper one.